Two Poems

Going to Bed Early
Illness, and going to bed early: this is like childhood -
the carved knobs at the foot of the bed, the patchwork
  quilt
a country paved with square fields an index of
other places other beds, peripheral aunts and
  families.
And this willingness to wait, as if inside
some dusty lacquered box carved to the shape of a fruit
reserves of time had been found and cautiously
unfolded, so that an hour can be spent in the glow of a
  lamp
tracing the bloom on the fall of a red velvet curtain
or re-reading the first chapter of a favourite novel
not opened for years. For nothing new must be
  started,
the mind will sample the aroma of evening
...